THE STORY OF EDGAR SAWTELLE
byDavid Wroblewski
Harper Collins, 2008, 562 pages
The most enchanting debut novel of the summer... this is a great, big, mesmerizing read, audaciously envisioned as classic Americana.... Pick up this book and expect to feel very, very reluctant to put it down.
— Janet Maslin, New York Times
Boy and dog stories are usually written for the young. David Wroblewski's effort comes off somewhere between Dean Koontz and The Night Stalker. It is not for the young and impressionable. Having said so, I can reliably report that The Story of Edgar Sawtelle is first class adult reading.
Edgar is the living result of two previous attempts that Gar Sawtelle and his wife, Trudy has made to produce a living heir. One miscarriage and a child that survived only a short time, left the couple with the feeling that they were not intended for parenting. Then the miracle of Edgar arrived. Their miracle came with a flaw-- he is mute. Doctors do not understand his condition or what brought it about. He simply cannot talk.
The boy establishes two strong bonds. First, he becomes a mother's boy-- and even more so following the murder of his father who, in all reality, may not be his biological father after all. The dark side of the Sawtelle family is embodied in Uncle Claude, his father's brother who has been away for a long time and returns home prior to his brother's death. The author hints that Claude's absence seems to have been the result of time spent in prison - a question that remains unspecified throughout the book.
Edgar immediately resents Claude's intrusion into his world although he finds himself in many ways like his uncle. When Claude moves into his parents = bedroom he becomes angry with his mother for being so weak as to allow the intrusion into their close-knit situation.
Edgar has a better relationship with the dogs his family raises, than with the adults in his life. His father (and mother) following Gar's death, teach him the nuances of canines, but neither have his talent for communication with dogs. He conducts lengthy conversations in sign with his charges so realistically that one quickly forgets that boy and dog are different species.
When he believes he has caused the death of the family veterinarian, Edgar escapes into the nearby woods with his latest litter of pups and their bitch. He promises to return when his mother appears by the barn in the morning and gives him the all clear signal. He decides, instead, to keep traveling with his brood until he and his company come to a creek. Most of the litter is swept away. Only the mother and two of her whelps remain.
In Victorian England, Edgar could have been a model for tales by Dickens. Although beset with natural phenomena from ferocious gnats to hissing vipers, Edgar and the dogs continue to survive and they go for days without anything better than berries to eat - both dog and boy. Avoiding flyers and banners with his photo boldly presented as well as being pursued by trained police officers (one of whom is the son of the vet he believes he killed), he slogs on through wilderness and settlements.
Troubled by not understanding his past nor the dark promise of a dismal future, he plunges on, plundering and looting uninhabited vacation homes along rivers and lakes, en route to an imagined refuge across the border into Canada. Throughout these adventures he seems only satisfied when he has stolen food for himself and his dogs. It seems unbelievable that he manages to pillage dozens of cabins during his journey north without ever being caught.
His dangerous mission is interrupted when he is caught red-handed, while attempting to load up on a well-stocked larder by a vacationer who has arrived unexpectedly. For some unknown reason, the older gentleman becomes a willing ally by aiding and abetting Edgar on his escape to Canada. Burdened with too many animals, Edgar leaves the younger dogs with his benefactor who drives him and the mother dog over back roads as far as he come to the Canadian Border where he deposits Edgar and his companion with instructions on evading any border patrol officers.
Winter is approaching. Edgar becomes confused. Why did he not wait for his mother 's signal? Why has he undertaken such a desperate escape? For reasons without any shown foundation, Edgar reverses course and within a short time he is back at the edge of the forest adjoining the farm where he was raised..
While he has been gone, Claude has continued to feather his own bed by allowing a third party to enter into a contract with the farm to raise dogs who will no longer be called Sawtelle Dogs. Edgar's ire becomes so intense that he decides to prove to his mother that his father did not die of natural causes, but was actually murdered by Claude.
Meanwhile, Claude has convinced the local deputy sheriff, who happens to be the son of the deceased vet, that his father did not die by accident. Actually, he implies, that Edgar caused the man 's death, further insinuating that one might come to a more eerie conclusion - the mute boy murdered the deputy' s father.
When Edgar discovers the hypodermic needle and poison he believes Claude used to dispatch his younger brother's exit to the netherworld, he feels he has the evidence to rid the farm of Claude forever.
Fate is always unpredictable. Before the curtain drops, the deputy attacks Edgar in the barn - his only intent to capture and interrogate the boy regarding the death of his beloved veterinarian father. In the throes of a melee, Edgar manages to dig into a bag of quick lime and flings a handful of the white death into the deputy ' s face which causes him to release the boy. During the struggle, Claude enters the barn and recovers the paraphernalia that will lead to his indictment for murder. In a genuine Keystone Kops struggle between Edgar and Claude, they are both trapped in what becomes a fiery tomb and die in what can only be described as a macabre circus of the absurd finale. The reader is left to assume what he or she will. One questions the relationship between Edgar and Trudy. Was there something physical about it? Edgar never shows any interest in anything but his mother and the dogs. He sleeps night after night with a female dog. Does this imply some bestiality? And - most questionable of all - was Claude, rather than Gar, Edgar's father? Was Trudy' s abortion and short-lived other child due to some bad seed within Gar? Did Claude provide the sperm to impregnate his sister-in-law? Did Trudy douse the deputy's face in order to blind him, knowing that water and quick lime would do just that? We are left with many unanswered questions.
However - for a first novel Wroblewski has twisted a tale comparable to writers of far more experience, both in life and the literary world, and will without a doubt develop a cult following - and richly deserved. He takes us on a psychological journey through the catacombs of Rome, into the chambers of the Inquisition - all of which might have been done during a brief stay in a sophisticated mental institution.
Dog lovers will be enthralled with the special breed of dogs that bear the Sawtelle imprint. Novices will discover that dog sense goes far beyond sit and stay. The research into dog breeding must have been intense because it is so excruciatingly displayed.
This book is not for namby-pamby readers. It is filled with brilliant nuances. Despite the criminal and psychological overtones, I felt compelled to read on because Wroblewski (no matter the weakness of his plot) transports us over a highway of words so well woven as to be deceptive in their intent.
Like I said, this is not a novel for children-- despite the beautiful descriptions of setting and the uncanny wisdom of the canine species.
I would give it a five star critique -- no matter the misgivings.
--reviewed by Ray Strait
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Uniscovered Country
by Lin Enger
(Little, Brown and Company, New York, 2008, 304 pages)
The title of this book comes from Hamlet :
"The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn
No traveler returns."
Like the play, this novel tells the story of a young man, Jesse Matson, whose father dies of a gunshot wound while hunting. Jesse soon comes to believe his uncle responsible, and sets out to extract revenge. Just as the play utilized the ghost of Hamlet senior, so does Lin Enger make use of the ghost of the father. Jesse, as narrator, is a smart kid, and he sees the parallels in his life to Hamlet, but this only adds fuel to his hatred and suspicions. Jesse also discovers his quest for revenge complicated by a relationship with a girl with whom he shared his thoughts and plans as well as his mother who retreats into a depressive shell.
Despite the connection to the play, Undiscovered Country feels fresh and new as the author delves into the internal struggle that drives the teenage narrator. In addition, the cold Minnesota winter becomes as much a character as anyone in the story, and its bleak cold often mirrors the events.
Often re-workings of classics fail on numerous levels, but Undiscovered Country succeeds on many levels. The characters are rich, the plotting tight, and the story convincing. The end may present a moral dilemma for the narrator as well as the reader, yet it also brings a satisfactory conclusion to all that has gone before.
This is the Lin Enger' debut novel, and a strong debut it proves to be. S Publishers Weekly said, the novel shows " flashes of prose as crisp and haunting as the frozen Minnesota setting."
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[Note: Lin Enger is the brother of Leif Enger, who wrote Peace Like a River and So Brave, Young, and Handsome.]
--reviewed by Jim Hitt
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Peace Like a River
by Leif Enger
(Atlantic Monthly, New York, 2001, 311 pages)
Peace like a River revolves around the coming-of-age of the narrator, eleven-year-old Reuben Land, whose life is torn asunder when his brother, Davy, kills two bullies. Although the law puts Davy in jail, he escapes. After that, the father takes Reuben and his sister on a cross-country search for Davy. Along the way they meet many characters before (in a miracle of coincidence) they find the older brother. Along the way Reuben's father also finds romance, and the family a new home.
The story explores the ideas of faith and family. If the novel tends a little too much in the direction of Christian preaching, we may forgive it by saying that the time is the 1950's in the American West, and the people--Reuban and his family and those they met--were likely to be as religious as Reuben sees them. Perhaps the novel's major fault lies in the character of Reuban, who often speaks and thinks like a boy much older than eleven. At one spot he says of his bother, ''History was built into Davy so thoroughly he could never see how it owned him.'' In addition, Davy never emerges as much more than a cardboard character who sets into motion the events of the story.
Still Peace Like A River possesses a strong narrative drive, and only in retrospect do the problems seem important. Leif Enger writes fluid and engaging prose, and if this novel lacks greatness, it certainly points to a writer with a bright future.
--reviewed by Jim Hitt
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